Why would Uber’s business model impact the standard billing method of established professional firms?

An interesting observation was made on a radio program I was listening to last night. Apparently a number of taxi operators in larger cities in the US are now doing all their pricing up-front for the passenger before they start the trip. This means that the old method of turning on the meter and charging what the end result was is becoming redundant as the taxi operators have worked out that the customer wants pricing certainty. If the cabdriver doesn’t provide it, the customer will go to Uber…

The disruption Uber has caused within the taxi industry globally has been well documented, however, it did get me thinking.

With increased penetration of up-front pricing for work that used to be based on an set (arbitrary?) rate by time, customers from all segments of the economy are going to start to question the logic of entering a transaction with no known end price. Where very other industry is going down the path of providing pricing certainty on commencement of a piece of work, why do the professions still believe they are immune from the impacts of the change?

In many respects, the taxi industry is similar to the professions – time by rate and it doesn’t matter to the provider how many hours (or miles) are spent on a job as they will know they are getting paid “for what they do”. The sad thing is this has been ripe for exploitation (who hasn’t been in a taxi which “took the long way” to get somewhere?) Unfortunately, it doesn’t create a great experience for the user of the services as they just have to grimace and wear it.

Disruption in pricing and business models is going to increase and roll through many other industries and professions that used to work on the time by rate model. Customers are experiencing more of it and are going to demand more of it.

Those firms that start on the path to pricing on purpose will see themselves gain a competitive advantage – those that don’t will wonder what the hell happened.

Have a look around the Verasage site – there’s lots of rich material in here (esp recommend a solid listen to Ron and Ed on their “The Soul of Enterprise” podcasts).

The professions are going to become “Ubered”. I hope they are ready for it.

With more firms moving to the Verasage pricing model (good on them – great move), we occasionally come across examples where firms haven’t really arranged their systems and processes to support the delivery of services.

We are fortunate enough to be picking up a new customer (via referral) from a competitor who has “productised” their offering and built their model around cloud accounting. Terrific.

The customer in question has been working with their accountant for many years and supported them as they moved the model to an agreed pricing platform (I don’t believe based on our discussions with the customer that the firm is anywhere near value pricing their services). They had been paying the monthly direct debit to cover all the services required. They had been providing all the information required to enable the firm to do what was required.

Now, put yourself in this customer’s shoes. They’ve been paying a monthly amount to the firm for the various compliance obligations for the past three years. However, they have only just now received the financials and tax returns for 2013/14 and 2014/15. Are they frustrated? Bloody oath.

To be clear here, they are pretty happy with the quality of the work they were getting – when they got it. They were driven up the wall by the constant chasing up to get information from the firm. They like the accountant they have been working with. But they feel like they have been “left for dead”. The experience they have had has been very unsettling for them. As they said – “we’ve paid for the work, why hasn’t it been done?”

Many firms are making the move to productising their offerings and moving more to an agreed pricing model.

They fall down badly though when their focus is on marketing and “brand building” rather than service delivery.

Having your customers pay into your account regularly is great for your cashflow. When you’re not delivering the services agreed to under that model, you have a problem.

The firm our new customer was going to is widely lauded as a “leader” in its field. It is held up as a paragon of virtue and “a major disruptor”. The problem is, the lived experience of their customers doesn’t support the hype.

We will be making sure we deliver our agreed services to them on time and support them up hill and down dale. We will also regularly check in with them to ensure they are happy with our delivery and service. The great thing is, once they get embedded into our firm, they are wanting to refer a whole heap of their mates to us who are also with this “progressive” firm as they are all having the same experience.

The other thing is, we are value pricing the engagement with the customer. They are wanting a heap more real-value services and they are more than happy to pay for them. This is money the “disruptive, progressive” firm was leaving on the table by productising their offering. The firm’s focus wasn’t on the customer, and that has created a marvellous opportunity for us.

When you do go down the path of changing your model, please ensure that you deliver what you agree to and keep the customer in the loop. It’s no use being a “leader” in the industry/profession if your walk doesn’t match your talk.

You also need to have the value conversation with the customer and listen to their needs and wants.

Only just received the 2015 copy of the “Good, Bad Ugly” report on the Australian Accounting profession prepared by Business Fitness. Makes for interesting reading.

There are a couple of points that are worth repeating:

revenue per partner has decreased by 8.9%;

average client fees have reduced by over 18% in the past two years;

for firms using timesheets, productivity is falling;

lower marketing spend over the past three years; and

6% increase in firms using outsourcing (reasonable number, but not very many firms are doing it).

There is one very telling comment made in the introduction to the statistics in the report (my highlights):

When analysing the 14 years’ worth
of data relating to high-performing
firms, we can conclusively say thatproductivity based on chargeablehours has no correlation toprofitability.

Having just returned from the Verasage get-together in Boston, it has become even more apparent that the old models of firm management are not only redundant, they are dangerous. Much of the discussion at the symposium related to the way successful firms focus on relationships – both internal and external. This has to do with building, maintaining and honoring decent relationships. Not relationships where everything is about flogging the crap out of your people and billing the hell out of your clients. Relationships which are based on trust, accountability and common goals.

Having seen the damage done by the Almighty Billable Hour and looking at the impact this approach has on the cultures of firms, it amazes me that so many firms still use this model.

There is change already here in our industry and, as the GBU report reveals, this change is having an all-pervasive impact on our profession. Either adapt or die.

I recently posted about a seminar I attended last week. The feedback I have received from that post has been significant. The responses have ranged from “Oh my Lord – that’s us” to “so, there is a way forward”. Great, but I want to concentrate on the first type of replies received.

So many firms understand that the way they operate and their business model isn’t great, but it’s all that they know. To try and move them to a new, more effective model takes a great leap in mental construct on behalf of the owners and managers in those firms.

One of the responses I received was from a bloke I know well who has just taken over as CEO of a professional knowledge firm. Well established, reasonable size and “good, traditional” brand. And he is frustrated up the wazoo!

It would appear from his email that the following issues pervade the organisation:

staff are rewarded with bonuses for hitting “productivity” targets;

The transfer from WIP into debtors (you know – actually billing the customer) is fraught in that, once the bills are raised, the customers get pissed off;

Consequence of this is that a lot of work remains in WIP as the senior people responsible for billing the WIP are too scared to raise the bill as they don’t want to have to deal with an angry customer;

Debtors ledger is out of control as there are a large amount of accounts “in dispute” which means that the whole thing is taking a massive amount of time and effort to clean up.

Now, from my view, this appears to be the antithesis of everything a professional knowledge firm should be. Let me posit my view of the warped thinking that enables such an environment to exist, let alone continue:

Productivity

We want our people to be working – agree on that. But, do we want them to be working on things that make a difference to the customer and are valued by the customer or do we want them doing things that waste a heap of time on customer accounts? The behaviour you reward is the behaviour that continues. By tying rewards (bonuses) to productivity targets, we are encouraging our people to bill as much time to the Holy WIP Ledger as possible. The argument goes that, when we record everything, it gives us a basis for billing everything to the customer (more on this below).

But what is the real message that we are sending to our people when we bonus (often ridiculous) productivity? Is it a message about effectiveness? And is it really a message about efficiency? Too many times, firm leaders sprout on about efficiency but the bonusing system actually penalises people from working more efficiently as their productivity targets won’t be met (the thinking goes: if I do this job more quickly, I won’t spend as much time and therefore, I stand less chance of getting the bonus). Where is the incentive for them to be more “efficient”?

As part of this system, you get the inevitable build up of your Holy WIP Ledger. Many firms see this as a “lead indicator” (as per last week’s post) when, in fact, it is a wish list that often bears very little resemblance to collection.

The other message you send to your people with the focus on hitting production targets as far as time spent is that they will only see a customer as something to be billed, not valued. The training that occurs as a consequence is that the “up and comers” get taught that to get ahead, you need to focus on pleasing the partner/manager with high productivity rather than pleasing the customer by delivering great outcomes.

As an aside, it is often the case that the less senior people very rarely (if ever) get to meet with the customers. How is this going to play out in their career development? How is this going to assist them with understanding the file and the customer needs? All information is “filtered” through the senior people before it gets to the actual “doers” of the work. The outcome – they flog their guts out to get promoted and then have no experience in dealing with customers face to face. I know of one firm in town here where the only people who see customers are the partners. Talk about rate limiting factors! An obvious outcome of this is that there is more rework required and heavier partner involvement in getting a file “customer ready” as the instructions are, more often than not, “lost in translation”. This though, in the warped world of timesheet based billing, is good – more chargeable hours to bill, higher “productivity” and a bigger Holy WIP Ledger.

Holy WIP Ledger (HWL)

So, we have a whole heap of people billing the Holy WIP ledger as hard as they can as this is the basis on which they get rewarded. The HWL is seen as a current asset in the books of the business and the financiers and owners of the business see it as “money in the bank”. All that needs to happen is for it to be billed.

Herein lies a bit of a problem. I have yet to meet with a firm where they state, honestly, that the HWL is fully recoverable. I know of one firm I have been dealing with who ran a HWL that was a pure estimate. They had timesheets to (sort of) back it up, but they knew that they were all rubbish so they just did an estimate. It was probably as approximately right as the timesheet based one anyway.

I recently did some work for a customer in a professional knowledge firm regarding the exit of a Partner. The HWL was obviously an issue to be addressed as the approach they were considering was one based on a mixture of profit and net assets. To get a true picture of net assets, there needed to be a full review of the HWL as everyone recognised that it was not valid and certainly not all collectible. In this circumstance, I suggested that we not go through this process. Instead, we developed an approach which looked at what the exiting Partner was happy to receive for his equity and what the continuing equity holders were prepared to pay for the share. As I said to the Managing Partner – “We can go through the whole process and get a result. The real risk here is, whilst it might be very right as far as the number goes, someone is likely to be pissed off”. The approach we used meant that my business didn’t get a whole heap of extra money for going through the valuation process, but, we did ensure that the Partners (exited and remaining) have kept very very good relationships and our customer very much values the creative approach we have adopted to solve their problem. In short, we provided value rather than a number. And we have further strengthened our relationship which will lead to more referrals and customer longevity.

The HWL is never right. The term in most professional firms is “lock-up” – how many days the firm has “locked up” in WIP and debtors. Often time, this number is horrendous – I know of some firms who have nearly one year’s worth of revenue “locked up”. For what purpose? You can’t spend it as it’s not real. Why bother measuring something that is so subjective as to be useless?

Debtors

To get a bill done from your HWL, it needs to go through a process. Often, it will be a senior person or Partner who goes through this process. More often than not, they will sit down and agonise over the process “If I bill them what’s on the HWL, they will have a melt-down”. So, what happens is that a bill will be raised against the customer for some portion of the HWL balance outstanding – in effect, what the person doing the billing believes they can get away with. Conversely, if you do bill them for everything that’s on the HWL, you are almost guaranteed to get a pissed off customer on the phone three days later (or, worse, never – as they quietly leave and have no intention of using you again – or paying your bill). There is no positive outcome that arises from this. For anyone.

Now, the current thinking with regard to this is that firms should budget for “write-offs”. In other words, they are saying (in words and deeds) that they know the HWL is crap. But they then hold that the basis of their charging of the client is on time spent. So, if the client has agreed to appoint them on time spent and they don’t bill the full time, are they really engaging them on that basis or on a “best estimate” at the end of the job? This is where “estimated ranges” of accounts come in to it. The client is told the cost of doing the work will be in the “range” of (say) $5,000 and $10,000. The client hears “$5,000”, the Partner hears “$10,000”. When the bill ends up being $8,000, both parties are pissed off.

What happens more often than people care to recognise is that there is a lot of “stuff” on the HWL that the senior guys are just too scared to bill. I have seen some aged HWLs which record work done up to two years prior that is yet to be billed. Seriously? Is it ever going to be billed? Or is it just there as a tacit admission that the system ultimately doesn’t work? This then leads to other KPIs in firms about the ageing of HWL. Most of these are there but not adhered to. If the WIP isn’t billable, write it off – with all the “appropriate” consequences.

But, back to the staff posting time to the HWL. How do they feel when the time they put in to a client is then written off? Where is the feelgood out of this? For anyone? What is their thinking at the end of a job when, they are encouraged and incentivised to record all the time only to have it written off? How will they think about the Manager/Partner who has “done this to them”? What message does it send about the “system”?

So, after much navel gazing and internal brinkmanship, the bill is sent out to the unsuspecting customer. The customer gets angry. Now, one of two things happens. The customer ring the Partner to have a whinge about the bill – the firms sends out a detailed HWL report to the customer detailing everything they have done (including the 15 minute phone call – billed as 18 minutes – where the customer recalls at least half of it was spent discussing the football results) for the period the bill covers. Guess what, they get more angry “They’re charging me for what?” Then they start to do the maths. “If he is $500 per hour and he spent 8 minutes talking about the football, he wants me to pay him $100 for that?” Not a great outcome.

Source: geektoauthor.blogspot.com.au

The other thing that can happen is that the customer simply doesn’t pay the bill. So, they start to get harassed by the ever-vigilant accounts department in the firm. The “friendly reminders” come out, then the “is there a problem” letters and so on until the letters get more threatening. Really good, positive stuff about customer engagement through this whole process.

At the end of the day, it gets nasty and people start defending positions. The firm will (usually) relent and write-off a part or the whole bill or, sadly, take the customer to arbitration. On this note, I remember a number of years ago when Ron Baker did his “Firm of the Future” tour around Australia. During this tour, I met with a number of the Legal Services Commissioners from various states around Australia. Their major source of work? Fee disputes. Their fervent wish was that all firms priced up front as the firms that did this hardly ever had a fee dispute.

So, we have a debtors ledger that is somewhat suspect as to the real collectability of the balance. Which means, when coupled with the HWL, the “lock up”metric used by a number of firms is inherently questionable.

After all of the above, is it any wonder why my firm dumped timesheets in 2007? It has saved innumerable hours, it has reduced customer complaints and has meant that the team in here are far more focused on delivering positive customer results rather than inputs. As stated above, the behaviours you get in your firm are the ones that you reward. Is your reward program incentivising the right behaviours? Is your firm business model one which is team and customer focused?

There is a better way of running a professional knowledge firm. Far less stressful, more enjoyable and one where you actually want to come to work. if you look after your people and customers, the profits will (generally) look after themselves.

The frustration of firm management can be reduced and/or removed. There are a band of highly experienced guys and girls at the Verasage Institute who can help you make the move. But you have to make the first step. I strongly encourage you to do so.

This week, I attended a seminar where, to be frank, there were some arguments put that had me considering the option of tearing my skin off and rolling in salt – it would have been less painful.

Consider some of the points made at in one of the presentations at the seminar (and this is not an exhaustive list, my comments/thoughts are in italics):

You should get your “star performers” and keep loading them up with work as they get in front of the pack. In effect, reward them for their great performance by loading them up even more and putting more pressure on them – what an incentive that is!;

Apparently, your WIP balance is a leading indicator for your firm (!) – not sure how this works, but some in the room lapped it up – how exactly is the WIP report a lead indicator other than for the bills you are going to raise at the end of the month which will be the cause of the client complaints in the month following? So, maybe it is a lead indicator – of client complaints – the higher the WIP, the more complaints;

The seminal approach to customer happiness: “If you touch the client, you bill the client – for everything”. This phrase reminded me of a discussion I had the other week with a somewhat more visionary firm in Adelaide. They have some folk who are not all that happy not recording the time they spend working on/for/with/around their customers. I asked them during the discussion “Do you record the time you spend thinking about your customers over the weekend or at night when you’re at home?” Of course they don’t. However, according to the approach being promoted, you should. Work that out, or, better yet – set a budget for it!;

You need to budget for write-offs each month;

References to “fixed price estimates” – what, exactly, are these? I have been racking my brain about this – if someone can provide some clarity for me around this concept, I would be grateful;

Apparently, client satisfaction is important, “but we do have to make a profit though” – in essence, the firm’s goal is profit first – if that has anything to do with happy customers, all well and good. To me, this seems somewhat arse-about;

You need to ensure that your clients understand that their actions reduce firm efficiency – OMFG. So, we should punish the clients for interrupting our work – actually laughed out loud at this one; and

Clients need to pay for the inconvenience they cause – as it would seem that they are the cause of all the problems that exist in the first place.

According to the sage presenting this, “clients don’t understand how accounting firms work”. Really? Do they need to?

It was argued that firms need to focus on productivity and efficiency at any cost as these are your major drivers for profit. You need to ensure that you are flogging the be-Jesus out of your people (they will apparently love you for it) and encouraging them to work harder so that you can load them up even more. This bit I found offensive. People are volunteers in your business – they can choose to turn up or not. I hear many firms complain about staff-churn and turnover – any bloody wonder! If your culture sucks, you get the team you deserve. Culture is the result of the language, behaviors and focus of a business. If these are all based around profit at any price, then they get the culture that supports that. Won’t be happy or contributory or collaborative, but it will be, well, there.

I have been a willing recipient of the famous “Verasage Headache” on numerous occasions. They are positive, challenging and serve to help me grow.

Unfortunately, the headache I received from this session was entirely different. It is a headache based around people being measured on productivity and chargeable hours rather than on effectiveness and customer relationships. It is a headache that resulted from arguing that the customer is there to be charged heavily and charged often – this based on the theory that any bill they get from you will be a good bill (driven, of course, by your “leading indicator” WIP report).

So, at the end of the session, I felt sad. Very sad. There were owners and managers of accounting firms in the room who were assiduously taking notes – picking up tips to make them better at flogging the crap out of their people and not really giving a shit about their customers.

Tim, our GM, was at the session with me. His words at the end of it summed the whole thing up beautifully – “Pretty scary shit actually”.

Friday night last week was not a bad night – a bit cold and wet, but with a roaring fire and some lovely wine and cheese, the evening progressed very comfortably ( I can highly recommend the Tarago River “Shadows of Blue“). One of my best mates came around to watch his football team get flogged – it was such an enjoyable spectacle that we ended up watching soccer and the Tour de France.

Over the course of the evening, we discussed many things and one of the topics we covered was the “ideal” approach that Doctors should have with their patients. To provide some context, my mate is a specialist Surgeon and has built a wonderful reputation in his field. He also teaches trainee surgeons and is on the examination panel for the Royal Australian College of Surgeons. All this is very surprising considering he supports Carlton Football Club.

As our conversation opened up, he shared with me the three factors that make for better doctor/patient relationships. His view was that where these three factors are in place and in order, the patient is happier, the health outcomes are generally better and there are fewer claims for adverse outcomes against the specialist.

The factors and the order? They are:

Availability;

Affability; and

Ability.

In precisely that order.

Expanding this approach through to other professions, it appears to me as though this might just be the most simple and easily understood “guide” for all of us.

Think about the customers whom you love dealing with. They will be the ones you make yourself readily available to. They are also the ones where you have a great personal relationship. And, generally, they won’t be overly focused on your technical ability as the relationship is the thing that resonates most with and for them. They respect your technical ability, but they value the relationship.

Over the weekend, I have reflected deeply on this approach and I believe it is something that we all should be aware of in our dealings with customers (in fact, everyone).

If you have a customer who is a pain and who you avoid contacting, nothing good is going to happen from the relationship. This situation is one where you need to consider the real value that you are bringing to the relationship and determine whether it really is one that you should maintain. Where you recognise that you don’t currently have the desire to be as available for a customer as you should be, is the relationship able to be recovered or should it be terminated? I know that over my career, I have had numerous situations of this type. They are really hard work and, even though you might get great results for them, there is very little satisfaction derived from the outcome.

Secondly, if you have a customer around whom you cannot be yourself and where you find your communication stifled and difficult, does this allow you to bring your “full game” to the relationship? If you aren’t being yourself (or worse, if they aren’t being themselves), can this be rectified or should it be discontinued? Again, there have been numerous occasions where I have had customers around whom I had to adapt my style and deliver with a very “serious” (so-called “professional”) demeanor. This is hard work – for them and me and my experience tells me that the absence of this factor in a relationship makes the whole process less satisfying for all concerned.

The ability thing I am leaving out here as, if the first two factors aren’t present, it doesn’t matter how good your ability is, the relationship will be difficult to nurture and develop.

This is only a short post to introduce the approach to this forum. I would love to get your feedback on this – it appears to be so simple, concise and to-the-point that you may wish to consider using it in your customer selection and retention process. I will be.

When such statements are made, context matters. History matters. Definitions matter. And, even if it were true, why do I care? Really, why do I care about how Bill Gates spends his money? So I asked my friend who posted this item to Facebook “why do you believe that?” And she replied by asking me a question of “not true? Below is the full set of Facebook comments:

My Response to the Question:‪ Didn’t say that. Just is spending $ the criteria. Carnegie invested in infrastructures that lead to great things. Difficult to compare generations. The gates’ have certainly been generous but with very tax sheltered money. Warren Buffet talks about why rich pay less % of tax like him in dividends and capital gains while at the same time avoiding estate taxes of 40% by giving money to gates (likely because he believes gates will spend it wiser than the U.S. Congress and he is now fool. But possibly a slight hypocrite). How does one really define most generous? Thomas Jefferson created a university, as did the Stanford’s. Gates hasn’t done that? It is easy to look at their money and even their time but comparing across generations is dangerous. We can look back in 100 years and decide. History is too short for them at this point Like Reply · June 5 at 7:57pm ‪

‪My Friend’s Friend Responds back to Me: Why do you have to disect generosity? Like Reply · 2 · June 5 at 8:47pm ‪

My Reply to the Friend: Why? Well because I believe that we should consider such questions. How should one define such subjective terms? Does a rich person who leverages tax deferred assets that are contributed to something he controls more generous then the union labor family that quietly tithes and donates countless hours to community services but without fanfare and media? Are we, as a society, to over value money relative to spirit? What value has come from there efforts? Can you prove it or feel it? I am sure the world is better with their contributions then without. This is not a slam. But why the need for such a label? True generosity is frequently done in quiet and not in public. It is too easy for a perplexed media to pander such easy opinions that get repeated (posted at 9:14 PM June 5th)

The above conversation got me thinking not only about the state of our collective critical thinking skills, but also about the bias of media outlets and others to view donating a fortune as the most important generosity.

One of the lost skills of our current culture and society is the infrequent use of reflective critical analysis. I don’t mean political polarizations – the screaming from our political extremes – I mean an individual’s personal reflection and thoughts about the value of ideas and thoughts posited as facts. When such statements (like the Gates’ are the most generous in history”) are made in a factual framework, people frequently (and IMHO too quickly) jump onto the proverbial bandwagon and repeat the statement without confirming or understanding its validity or its limitations.

We all played the old telephone game when we were kids. The game was a lesson in our inherent weaknesses in communications, even within a small group and with nearly homogenous members. Statements by media outlets are merely a small segment (albeit overly influential) of our society’s infatuation with others and their lives and choices. It is too easy to simply accept what is spammed around the internet (or worse yet reported via a Google Search) and pass it on like it is a demonstrable fact (one reason the website Snopes is so popular with some people is to merely have some level of a Bullshit Meter available to inform the uniformed that the 65 year old Russian Woman really didn’t just deliver 17 children) but Snopes isn’t any good in cases where simple logic, inductive and deductive reasoning, and inquiry via questioning are superior to just accepting the statement as true, complete, and supportable by some level of independent verification . I’ll return to this topic in future postings, however for now, I believe my point has been made and you, the faithful reader shouldn’t be bludgeoned about this topic at this time.

Meanwhile, I decided to consider the value of the gifts of the Gate’s Foundation to that of Wal-Mart. Both enterprises benefit society: one (Gates) by endowing upon groups, institutions, and individual, grants, gifts, fellowships, and funding (frequently with controls, reports, strings, etc.). The other, (Wal-Mart) focuses on being the voice of the people. Wal-Mart is constantly reducing prices so that people (especially poor people) may receive the maximum value for their money.

Note: Unlike many people, I am a fan of Wal-Mart. Although I do not regularly shop there out of choice; I recognize the value Wal-Mart has created for our national and global economy. There are certainly many criticisms available to cast upon Wal-Mart and its practices. Many of these criticisms are (IMHO) overly jaundiced and lack the intellectual curiosity about the truth that I seek. For example, people will compare Wal-Mart to Costco as it relates to pay and benefits. Costco earns $2B per year from its membership fees. Wal-Mart is free. Costco reports a profit of about $2B per year. Hence 100% of CostCo’s net profits are from membership fees and not from profits generated by sales of their products. Wal-Mart does not have a membership cash flow. Wal-Mart is profitable for sure. However if Wal-Mart had increased its average wages back in about 2007 from say $9/hour to $12/hour – 100% of all of Wal-Mart’s profits would vanish and that would have created less stores, higher prices, and less choice (all of these are bad outcomes for poor people) – I will return to Wal-Mart and its complexities in future posts. The key part is that Wal-Mart kept inflation low in the USA for over a decade (the Government can’t do that); Wal-Mart lowers prices for the poor (what do anti Wal-Mart people have against helping the poor); Wal-Mart helps poor and rich in its communities by fostering lower overall prices at stores that aren’t even Wal-Mart (e.g. Safeway has to be competitive so it must balance its value proposition with options like Wal-Mart); Wal-Mart helps the environment by taking waste out of the distribution system (like excess boxes, wraps, etc.); Wal-Mart shares the savings of its innovations with all three of its constituencies (example – when Wal-Mart found a way to save 5 cents on packaging – the supplier was able to keep 40% of the savings, the customers received 40% of the savings, and Wal-Mart kept 20% of the savings {note this is not a sign of a greedy company – this is one that understands that value and profits must be shared}. These are just some of the benefits of Wal-Mart that aren’t widely discussed.

Lets now look at how the Gates Foundation and all of its PR stacks up against Wal-Mart (note – I will provide sources for statistics at the end of this posting for your individual reference):

According to the Gates Foundation website, lifetime gifts equal $33.6B (which is a boatload of money {and Gates has more for sure}). So, I will agree that Gates has provided a generous amount of money. Way more than I have; however I would like to believe I am at least as charitable but on a different scale.

Wal-Mart on the other hand as certainly provided community support, shareholder dividends, employment, and federal, state, and local taxes. I will ignore these societal contributions. I will focus on savings the customers have received by paying less at Wal-Mart then if Wal-Mart either didn’t exist or more likely wasn’t in their community.

For Wal-Mart statistics, I will reference only the past decade. Hence any value Wal-Mart provided during its first 35 years of existence only adds to my analysis. It should be noted that the values below are through my own analysis as Wal-Mart doesn’t provide statistics as to its “savings” provided. There are plenty of price comparisons though and you can use the link I provide below or perform your own research.

Some basic pricing savings for Wal-Mart as compared to its competitors averages 3.8% across the board. That means for every $1 spent a Wal-Mart, on average, a consumer would need to pay $1.038 in the general marketplace. More specific to say the North American market would be to compare Wal-Mart to Target. Target’s prices are (on average) 2% greater than Wal-Mart. This means a consumer is certainly better off shopping at Target as it relates to typical market-basket markets and stores and slightly worse off then shopping at Wal-Mart. In my analysis I will use a 1% across the board savings (which is likely at least ½ to 1/3rd of the actual savings – hence I wanted to be conservative with my values {e.g. less predictive savings value then to report more}.

Wal-Mart reported a total gross sales of 3.716 Trillion Dollars over the most recent 10 year period. Wal-Mart reports 144 million customers per week. For scale that means slightly more than 1/3rd of all Americans shop at Wal-Mart each and every week. The average sale is $61.17 (I did that by math). Using the 1% value noted above as net savings – that means each customer saves 61.17 cents per visit. This equates to a 10 year savings of $45.671B (the math is: 144M*52 (this gets us visits per year)*10 (now we get visits per decade)*.61 (the savings per visit) = 45.677B {rounded}) (see high school algebra does come in handy).

Comparing Wal-Mart benefits to the customer – freeing them up to spend their savings as they wish of 45.677B to Gates’ gifts 33.6B, we learn that Wal-Mart has provided 36% more benefit then Gates.

So who is more generous? Bill and Melinda Gates or Wal-Mart? Ultimately that depends upon how you want to value generosity. I believe that Wal-Mart has provided tremendous real value and continues to provide that value each and every day and with each interaction with its customers, suppliers, communities, and shareholders. Gates provides value too – simply differently. Wal-Mart is likely more democratic about their contributions to society as they aren’t philosophically motivated to achieve any other objective then low prices and great value to its customers by constantly improving its supply chains, distribution, and watching any and all costs. Gates desires to have certain effects and outcomes. That is a value of spending one’s own money – you do get to choose where it goes (isn’t American great?).

Essentially, distinctions such as most generous, best run, nicest, most labor friendly, and any other type of ranking always needs to be analyzed to ascertain how the conclusion(s) were reached, why the conclusions really matter, and how do we confirm we have a reasonable understanding of the analysis necessary to draw our own conclusions as to the veracity of the statement. Otherwise we fall victim to our own ignorance as we propagate false and/or inaccurate statements as fact and hence contribute to the mental pollution that is all too popular in our current leap to quick judgments and fast answers.

OK, so we’ve all got them. You know, those things that we look back on and think “what the hell – why did I do that?” or, (even worse) “why didn’t I do that?”

I’ve had plenty – more of the former type than latter, but it all forms part of the rich tapestry of life that we humans form part of. And, much as we may regret things, it helps us develop into the people we are and forms the foundations of who we will be. Great.

BUT, what would happen if you knew that something was going to happen and, despite every nerve in your body screaming at you to do something, you didn’t “do it” (whatever “it” might be) – is that really a regret? If you adopted a stance of denial, does that turn into a form of regret?

How is it that, even when confronted with massive amounts of evidence supporting a reality that is going to occur (and I’m not talking “consensus” here) – I am talking incontrovertible facts – you still don’t make the moves that are required?

I’m not going to launch into semantics here (I will leave that to my far more learned colleagues in Verasage), I am just trying to posit the argument that often times, people do not do what they should and don’t take action when they should or find a million reasons not to do something they know they need to because, well, they have lost something.

What is the loss they have made?

Consider if you will the current state of the accounting profession. We are seeing massive changes set upon us – mainly from technology/cloud solutions, but also from offshoring operations. Did you know, for example, that most of the Big Four have established offices throughout Asia to which they “in-source” their compliance work at (about) AUD10 per hour? I know of an Australian example where a large corporate has moved a significant volume of their processing/admin work to a Pacific nation as the effective wage rate there is AUD1.20 per hour – a bit better than the award rate over here!

This is all happening now. Today. To our beloved accounting profession. And what are the vast majority of our colleagues around the world doing about? Nothing.

I posted some time ago about the changes that were occurring to our profession. The changes that were coming then are rolling out even more quickly than I anticipated.

So, what is the profession doing to adapt to this change? Not much. Some of us a screaming to all who can be bothered to listen that there needs to be a change in business model. Hardly anyone seems to be listening. Or caring. And we are not, by the way, being “chooky looky” – the sky is falling in!

What are most accounting firms doing to try and combat the inevitable? They are trying to be more efficient. Making better time recording platforms and putting greater emphasis on staff productivity. Anyone recall Danny DeVito in “Other People’s Money”? Buggy whips.

To make the process more precise isn’t what’s required in the accounting profession today (or tomorrow). As Ron Baker is fond of saying – “I’d rather be approximately right than precisely wrong”. Bravo Ron! But tell that to the Luddites who persist with a 1950’s business model 65 years after it was made common place and 64 years after it became redundant.

The time-sheet is an anachronistic tool that does not fit with today’s requirements. Staff hate them, admin hates them, managers hate them and Partners/Directors hate them. The people who hate them most however, are the second most important people in your business – your customers.

In some respects, I am advocating a “back to the future” scenario – get rid of time-sheets – but with some important changes. Changes like agreeing the scope of work and price up front with your customer. The change which includes and involves your people in determining scope – and price! The one where you truly empower your people to shine rather than record their misery in 6 minute increments.

Ed Chan of Chan & Naylor last week posted on Linked In. Chan’s argument is that accountants sell time. No. We don’t. We sell solutions to our customers’ problems. His argument is that the “solutions” (I am expanding his argument a little here, but I believe it is in the same vein as what he has written) are all compliance-based whereby all we are doing is the “same thing” for each client. As I have illustrated above, the basis of a lot of the compliance work is going to be automated or off-shored. So scalability only applies if you’re doing basic, processing and bookkeeping work. Not exactly what we’re trained for is it?

Similarly, setting an arbitrary hourly rate to charge them for your time isn’t reflective of their need or the value that they place on the work to be done. Using the same rate for everything you do makes you pretty “average”. And remember – average is where the best of the worst meets the worst of the best.

My belief is that every customer is unique and have their own set of fears, needs and the like. To try and put them all in one basket is to demean both them and the people who work on their files.

Chan’s argument is also based on the premise that all you have to do is to hire more people and more customers will come to you. Oh, to live in such a wonderful world!

From my experience (such as it is), the only way you can achieve this is to discount your offering to a level that drives people to you. And then, what happens to “the margin” that Ed believes is the Holy Grail? That and the fact that you’ll generally get the bottom-feeding clients who don’t value what you do anyway and will bring a whole heap of their “friends” along with them – High School Chemistry – like attracts like. You will also not exactly engage your people as they merely become cogs in a never-ending grind out of tax returns. Inspiring isn’t it!

So, in Ed’s world, where “you build a business to prepare a tax return”, I believe there will be regrets. Lots of them.

Customers don’t want tax returns. They want advice. Support, Counsel. Encouragement. SOLUTIONS. The tax return work is only there because the government stipulates it. Nobody really “values” it in the true sense of the word. And the ultimate disruption? I know of at least one of the Big Four that will be offering their clients compliance work for $0 in the coming years. How’s “the margin” on that?

Getting the business model right for accounting firms is critical given the disruptive times we are in. Making a bigger or cheaper version of what exists won’t answer the challenge – it merely cements in a race to the bottom for those firms that don’t adapt.

Regrets? Yep, I have them. A number of them. One I do not have however is getting rid of time-sheets and moving to a business model that will sustain our business, our people and our customers for a long time.

Oh – the loss they have made that I referred to above? It’s a loss of self esteem and belief in why they do what they do. And that, my friends, can be scaled!

Ed and Ron will interview Brad Smith, Global EVP of Customer Experience at Sage. Brad is responsible for developing all aspects of the Sage customer experience, from product design to the invoice experience and all points in between. He has nearly 20 years of leadership in web consumer, enterprise software, and communication service provider industries. Brad is on the board of the Consortium for Service Innovation and loves talking about customer experience.

They say you can’t turn back the clock and go back to the good old days. Yet this is precisely what is happening with the total quality service movement, the customer loyalty movement, CRM, and other philosophies that put the customer at the center of the business organization. Millions of dollars are being spent on consultants to relearn what was once common sense, practiced by the great entrepreneurs from the turn of the century to the mid-1950s. This show, the first in our Entrepreneur Heaven Series, will explore the wisdom of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, J.W. Marriott, and Walt Disney. Wisdom is timeless, and occasionally turning back the clock is the wisest course of action. Sometimes history is our best teacher.